


Fatalitas!

by mikkey_bones



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: 20th Century, Alternate Universe - Historical, Anarchy, Banter, Burglary, F/M, Gen, Puns & Word Play
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-17
Updated: 2013-11-17
Packaged: 2018-01-01 20:17:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1048122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikkey_bones/pseuds/mikkey_bones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The year is 1905.  Joly, Bossuet, and Grantaire stage a robbery, and consider themselves gentlemen burglars; Grantaire considers the inevitable end of their professional careers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fatalitas!

**Author's Note:**

> The title was inspired by a common phrase used by Gaston Leroux in his French pulp novel series _Chéri-Bibi_ ; it's also common in prison tattoos of the era.
> 
> The story itself was inspired by the activities of anarchist gangs in the Belle Epoque, and the character of Arsène Lupin, _gentleman cambrioleur_ , who was in turn inspired by [an anarchist named Marius](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marius_Jacob). It all comes full circle.

“They’ll be here in the automobile any minute,” Bossuet commented under his breath.  Grantaire, squatted by the lady’s boudoir and methodically going through each drawer, could barely hear him, and decided (for once) not to reply.  At any rate, with Joly as their lookout, they would be fairly safe – Joly, a confirmed hypochondriac tending towards anxiety, had all of Grantaire’s wits and none of Bossuet’s bad luck, making him a sharp lookout who wouldn’t miss a thing.

There was nothing to be found in the boudoir but lacy things in which Grantaire had no particular interest; he moved on to checking the closet, where there were many more places to hide valuables.  Bossuet, the safe-breaker, was looking behind portraits.  They had already found a lucrative stash of bonds and banknotes in the office, though, so Grantaire wasn’t hoping for much.

He had just finished rifling through a chest (from which he retrieved a pair of pear earrings and a nice long necklace, but nothing else of note) when Joly’s signal, a loud whistle, echoed through the grounds.

“And we’re off!” Grantaire said more loudly than intended, startling Bossuet, who nearly dropped a photograph; he managed to catch it at the last minute and place it carefully back on the lady’s desk.

“About time,” Bossuet muttered.  He and Grantaire had split up the goods, but both of their pockets were stuffed, and the small black bags each of them carried were jingling with jewelry and coins.  He gave the bedroom one last look, then hurried out, joining Grantaire in the hallway.

As Joly had a good vantage point, and could see a car coming from ten minutes away (they had checked, when they were setting up the robbery), neither Bossuet nor Grantaire was particularly worried.  Still, they hurried outside, where Joly, twisting his cap in his hands, was already waiting for them.

“Come on, come on, boys,” Joly hissed.  Grantaire had always felt that Joly tended towards the dramatic and now was no different – though there was no danger of them being overheard here, if they didn’t yell, he still insisted on whispering.  “You’re a minute late.”

“Who times to the minute?” Grantaire asked, though of course they all did.  Their profession depended on correct timing (which is probably why Bossuet, who lacked any sort of luck, had still succeeded as a burglar; he had an impeccable internal clock).

Joly grabbed their arms.  “Never mind that.  Let’s go!”  The three of them hurried across the lawn and into the hedges, where they had made a crawlspace for themselves a few weeks before, when the monsieur, his wife, and their children had last gone for a day trip.

A few weeks were enough to make the hedges grow more than was comfortable.  Grantaire cursed as a branch scraped his face.  “There go my looks!” he said.  “Louison will spit at me in the street.”

“Doesn’t she always?” Bossuet, who was not having a very good time himself, asked, glancing back to laugh and nearly getting his eye poked out by a stray twig.

His friend’s near miss caused Grantaire to laugh in his turn.  “Whatever you say,” he replied.  “I swear the last time she saw me there was a special sort of twinkle in her eye.”

“Certainly a twinkle of anger, and probably because you were serenading her at the door of her shop,” Joly pointed out from in front of them.  “Anyway, hush!”

Grantaire was tempted to shove Bossuet in retaliation, in the hopes that he would fall into Joly and Joly would fall into the mud, but resisted.  Musichetta was driving their getaway vehicle, and she probably wouldn’t stand for such a thing.

Though...

“How does your mistress feel about dirt?” Grantaire asked as they were coming out the other side of the hedge.  Now they simply had to walk to a ditch, climb down an embankment, and follow it five minutes until they could climb out and reach the road.  It was a fairly simple route, especially as it hadn’t rained recently and the ditch was mostly thick, half-dry mud.

“She considers it with equanimity,” Joly replied.  Now that they were further from danger, he allowed them to walk three abreast, side by side, and was even jauntily swinging his cane, a vanity that was so out of place in this ditch, Grantaire thought, that it verged on absurdity.

“Even her own?” Grantaire pressed.

“That is decidedly less pleasing with her.  She views it as did Marshal von Moltke, surveying the French at Sedan.”

Grantaire raised his eyebrows at the reference, but continued gamely with the metaphor.  “So straightening up, for Musichetta, is less of a clean sweep and more of a rout.”

“A rout for the dirt, yes,” Joly replied and glanced up at Grantaire, curiosity written plainly on his brown face.  “Why do you ask?”

Grantaire shrugged, thinking better of pushing Joly; he was hardly so petty and the game had lost its fun anyway.  “I was considering tripping you, to make you fall in the mud, so that you, who have already surrendered to the beautiful charms of your mistress, would have to surrender in a different sense, as did the august Napoleon III surrender to the Prussians.”  He scoffed.  “But I have reconsidered.  A rout is always painful to watch, and our shoes are getting the worst of it anyway.”

“Shoes, at least, can run away,” Bossuet pointed out philosophically.  “I am not at all sure that Joly can do the same, when Musichetta is concerned.”

“And are you one to talk?” Grantaire asked, wiggling his eyebrows in Bossuet’s direction.

He couldn’t continue with further innuendoes before Joly hit him in the arm.  “Shut up.”

“Your wish is my command.”

“If only,” Joly replied dryly.  “Imagine if that were true–”

“If Grantaire was some genie!” Bossuet interjected.  “His words do, all too often, come from the bottle.”

“Wishes, too, but only for myself,” Grantaire added.  “And my three wishes would be wine, wine, and more wine!”

Joly frowned at him.  “Just say unlimited wine and have done with it.  Save your two other wishes.”

“But for what?” Grantaire asked.  “Call me a pessimist, but wishes hardly ever work out the way they are supposed to.  I would be wishing for unhappiness no matter what I asked for, so perhaps the wine could drown it.”

Bossuet clapped Grantaire on the back.  “Come now, we won’t need any wishes once we cash all of this,” he commented.

“Though I’d like to keep a string of pearls for Musichetta,” Joly added quickly.  “If you have pearls–”

“Of course we have pearls!  More pearls than could be produced by all the oysters in the fish market!” Grantaire replied ebulliently.

“Here,” Bossuet said as they walked, stopping in his tracks.  The others stopped too, Grantaire nearly falling into the mud – luckily, he managed to remain upright.  “Give me a boost, capital R.”

“Yes, that would be capital of you,” Joly added, refusing to miss any opportunity for a pun.

Grantaire gave a long suffering sigh.  “So this is what you subject Bahorel to,” he commented as he laced his fingers together as a stirrup for Bossuet’s foot, making a face as his shoe got mud all over Grantaire’s hands.  “No wonder he called in sick today,” Grantaire grunted as Bossuet used him as an extra step to scramble over the embankment.  “The most lucrative burglary could not give me enough money to pay for this capital indignity.”

Joly did the same, slipping his foot into Grantaire’s hands and then scrambling up the embankment, though more nimbly than Bossuet, and then it was Grantaire’s turn; he grabbed one of Bossuet’s hands and one of Joly’s, and together they pulled him over the embankment.  He lay panting in the grass for a moment before a woman’s laughter startled him out of his recovery.

“You made it!” Musichetta said.  Grantaire rolled over; he saw Musichetta’s feet first, planted in the short grass at the side of the road; his eyes slid up her body to her face, though all he managed to see was a silhouette before the bright blue sky.  “Though Grantaire, perhaps,” Musichetta added, watching him, “has left his wind in the ditch.”

“That and my dignity,” Grantaire replied, getting to his feet more laborious than was perhaps necessary.  “But I lay my spoils at your feet, dear woman,” he added, holding out his small cloth bag with an exaggerated bow.  “Do with me what you will, but bear in mind my great generosity.”

Instead of taking his bag, Musichetta hit him on the shoulder, laughing.  “Come on.  We should be going before the Monsieur realizes he’s been had.”

“If we must,” Grantaire said with a long-suffering sigh.  Bossuet and Joly were already in the car – Bossuet in the back, Joly in the front; re-pocketing his black bag, Grantaire hopped over the side of the automobile and sat down next to Bossuet.  “I apologize in advance for the mud on the floors,” he said to Musichetta, as charmingly as possible.

She laughed as she started the car.  Grantaire would have told Joly to get out and help her, rather than lounging in the front, but last time he had tried, Musichetta had rejected and then mocked him for his pains.  “Oh, no matter.  It isn’t my car.”

Grantaire raised both eyebrows and glanced at Bossuet, who appeared unmoved; he decided to keep his mouth shut.

“Well then,” Musichetta said as the engine started with a roar, hurrying around to get into the front seat.  “How did it go, boys?”

“Fruitfully,” Joly replied.  “Like taking apples from a tree.”

“Someone else’s tree,” Bossuet provided.

“Someone who patrols his field very little, if at all,” Grantaire added.  “The simplicity and security of the bourgeoisie continue to amaze.  I suppose that is why they moved into the country – the thought the bad men of Paris, like its bad vapors, were confined to the city limits.”

“So the house staff was no trouble?” Musichetta asked as they bumped down the dirt road.  It was annoying, Grantaire thought, to be rattled about so, but such was the price of an easy escape.

Joly shrugged and shifted, resting his cane on one knee and leaning in so that his voice could be heard over the engine.  “Hardly.  The gardener was trimming the hedges in the front of the ground, and we exited on the opposite side.  The maid’s chambers are at the top of the house, and the cook was busy preparing a meal for the family’s return.  Everything went according to plan.”

Everything always went according to plan, Grantaire thought but didn’t say, because declarations of that sort were tantamount to asking for problems.  Though he eschewed many beliefs, he was still a burglar at heart, and so burglars’ superstitions were ingrained in his heart.  Everything always went according to plan because if it didn’t, they’d end up in the courts and then, for him at least, it was a straight trip to Cayenne, to labor there in the jungle heat.

Grantaire had no intention of getting sent off in the first place and anyway it seemed like it would be much easier to escape from there than from St. Martin de Re or anywhere on the mainland.

While Grantaire was thinking about prison, Bossuet was yawning.  “I’m exhausted,” he said.  He was always tired after jobs.  “I could sleep for a thousand years.”

“We have to get back to Paris, at least,” Joly piped up, and they would; with Musichetta driving, they would return comparatively fast, too.

“Enjolras’s meeting is tonight,” Grantaire realized aloud.

Joly rolled his eyes.  “You mean, our meeting.”

“Not mine,” Grantaire pointed out.  “Never mine.  Politicking has never been my forte.  I work much better behind the scenes, and behind the law.”

“But what is law?” Bossuet asked as Joly and Musichetta gave exasperated groans in unison.

“Law is a piece of paper I have never seen with my own eyes,” Grantaire replied, launching into a full-fledged monologue.  “Anarchy is a grand experiment that has never been enacted, and prison is a word.  Prison.  It’s pronounced rather like a cage, isn’t it?  So definitive on either end.  But law and anarchy – one is open at the end, the other at the beginning.  It makes an interesting point about politics, but one that fails to interest me.  Politics are words on the wind, and change is a specter we can see but cannot touch.  In Athens, you know–”

“No,” Joly said, twisting around in his seat to grimace at Grantaire.  “You two, save it for tonight.  For now, enjoy the drive.  You’re not nearly drunk enough to talk like that and I’m not nearly drunk enough to listen.”

Grantaire laughed.  “Listen, or indulge me?  Because I do not have to be drunk to indulge myself.”

“Hush,” Joly repeated, and Musichetta laughed.

“I’ll buy you all drinks,” she declared.

“I’m giving you a necklace,” Joly declared.

Grantaire pulled a face and looked at Bossuet, who finally met his eyes with an answering grimace; that was more like it.  “The lovebirds,” he began.

“Now, now,” Bossuet said.

Grantaire grinned.  There would be more to say about that later.  “And you’re going to the meeting?”

“We’ll find a fence and then go.”

“You can take care of my share,” Grantaire said.  “If you wouldn’t mind; I was going to pay a visit to Bahorel.  We brawlers have to stick together – though that isn’t what I said last week, when he had his fight.”

Bossuet chuckled.  “Very well.  Will you come to the meeting?”

Grantaire looked at Joly and Musichetta in the front seat, their heads nearly touching as they murmured to one another, at the countryside rolling past them, verdant and fertile, and then turned back to Bossuet.  “I suppose so,” he replied.  “At the very least, I can drink wine and contemplate a better life.”

“Enjolras does not care that we are thieves–” Bossuet began, but Grantaire waved him into silence.

“A burglar I might be, but I am hardly a thief.  A burglar takes mere objects, and concerns himself solely with the higher classes.  A thief is unscrupulous, taking what is needed by others and not by himself.  A thief is a leech – a burglar, a corrective tonic.  I know very well that Enjolras is not ashamed of _burglars_ , and that, in a sense, he approves of our work.  We serve the same spirit, after all, the one that lives in between those paper laws and menaces the President and all of Parlement as they sleep soundly in their mansions.  A necessary destabilizing force, we, the forerunners of the communists and the anarchists, the burglars who act with no laws and redistribute property as we will.  We are the proletarian dictatorship of the new society – I have read my Marx, you see!  And Enjolras–”

Joly had turned around in his seat again and was giving Grantaire an exasperated look.  “Stop, already!  Save it for tonight.  You’re in fine form and I don’t want you to lose all your material before you get some wine into you.”

“Lose all my material,” Grantaire scoffed; it was all in his head, and he spoke merely what was on his mind at the moment.  But at the same time, he quieted, slipping down slightly in his seat and leaning his elbow against the door of the automobile, looking out at the countryside contemplatively.  Back to Paris, then, with at least five hundred francs in his pocket.

They could have done much worse, he supposed.


End file.
